Have We Ever Seen Anything as Disgusting as the "Romney Killed My Wife" Ad?

RUSH: You know what I'm sitting here doing? I'm trying to think of a campaign ad from the past, in my lifetime, to compare with the "Romney Killed My Wife" ad. We know that the Obama people know that it's a lie. We know that they knew that everything in it was false. They don't care. That is the big point: They don't care. The point of that ad... Maybe we should spend some time explaining what the purpose of this is, because a lot of people make a mistake, here.

For example, my friends, I know how you think of yourselves. You're honest. You're ethically attentive. I mean, nobody's perfect, but you try to do your best. You don't purposely screw people. You don't lie on purpose for your own aggrandizement and gain. And therefore it's really hard to relate to people that do. Because you wonder: Where is their conscience? When you're not unethical and when you care about integrity and when honesty and these kinds of virtues matter to you, you are understandably (sometimes inexplicably) befuddled in dealing with people who don't have any of those concerns.

Who aren't honest.

Who aren't ethical.

Who don't have a conscience.

Who are not concerned with virtue.

So understanding those people, sometimes, is a waste of time. Sometimes it doesn't matter once you do figure it out. But what are they trying to do? They do not have one thing they can say about their candidate. They don't have one thing they can say about Barack Obama. There's not one positive thing. There's not anything that's happened in this country that he's had a hand in, in the last 3-1/2 years, that they can say, "This guy's great. We need more of this."

They can't.

All they can do is this. They have to shore up their base and they've decided that they're going to do whatever it takes to make the people of this country think that Mitt Romney is one of the most reprehensible human beings on earth. And it doesn't matter to them how they get that done. They have got to take away Romney as an alternative choice to Obama. They have got to say, "Yeah, okay. Maybe Obama has not done the best but this guy? We can't afford this Romney because this guy's even worse. People died when Mitt Romney got involved in their lives!"

And they're perfectly fine with that.

They're perfectly fine.

It's like JR Ewing once said on Dallas: Once you get past the integrity roadblock, everything is easy. And that's who we are dealing with. And, by the way, that's who Obama and David Axelrod have always been. So, the purpose of the ad is not really to say that people died when Mitt Romney got into their lives. The purpose of the ad is to make Mitt Romney look like an absolutely reprehensible, horrible human being. And this is just the latest ad in the effort to get this done.

Now, I've had two reporters e-mail me today. They said, "Why are you so upset at Andrea Saul?" Andrea Saul is Romney's spokeswoman who went on Fox 24 hours ago, yesterday morning, and responded to this "Romney Killed My Wife" ad by saying: "Well, if she had lived in Massachusetts she would have had health care." "Rush, why were you so upset about that?" Byron York, one of the guys that wrote me, said, "I've got a question for you. No matter what Obama does, the Democrats circle the wagons and defend him and support him.

"Here you had what might be a little slip-up by one of Romney's people and you, Ann Coulter and Erick Erickson at Red State went ballistic. Why didn't you circle the wagons around Andrea Saul?" This is what I told him. (I don't know if it's going to appear in what he writes.) I said, "In my opinion, the Democrats are unified. They're unified in a singular objective and that's beating us. Forever and always, every day. We are their number one enemy.

"We're a bigger enemy than al-Qaeda and bigger enemy than the Muslim Brotherhood or Soviet Union. We're a better enemy than ... you pick it. Beating us is what animates them and whatever it takes, they'll do. The Republicans and conservatives," I said, "are not unified. And we conservatives don't think the Republican establishment knows yet what they're up against. That ad was a smear!" The way she answered... And I'm not harping on her. Folks, this is not about her. I don't want anybody to think it is. I'm not hitting a girl here.

The question I had after hearing Andrea Saul's response was: Did they not get the premise? They're just accepting the premise here. "Romney killed my wife!" Don't you understand what this ad...? What was it? Some people said it was a smear. It's worse than a smear! The way to respond to that ad was not to accept its premise and then say, "Well..." It scared me that they may not know what they're up against. That's the reaction I had to it. And that's why I went...

I don't know that I went ballistic, but I'm probably going ballistic now. But I did. I did yesterday and I'm saying again: I'm not trying to attack her, because it's not just her. I ask myself daily if the Republican establishment really understands what we're up against here. And I ask myself every day: Do they understand this is not just the usual politics of the day? And some days I answer that in a way I like and other days I'm not convinced that they do. So that's why I reacted that way.

What was there to circle the wagons around?

So the point being, I'm thinking: Is there anything, a campaign ad from the past, to compare with "Romney killed my wife!" Now, the liberals say (and Snerdley just told me), "Well, well, ever heard of the Willie Horton ad?" Yeah, I have. But the problem with the Willie Horton ad is it was true! Willie Horton went on furlough and committed those atrocities. He did it. The liberals think that the Willie Horton ad was unfair because it was racist. Obviously. Willie Horton, a black criminal, went out and committed crimes in a gas station.

It was true!

He was furloughed by a liberal Democrat: Soft-on-crime Michael Dukakis. Everything in the Willie Horton ad was true. "How about the Swift Boat Ads?" They hated the Swift Boat ads. Another thing: The Swift Boat ads were true! It was Swift Boat crew members who had served with John Kerry who said the guy's a fraud. It was true! The Swift Boat people knew Kerry. The Democrats and media were, as Byron said, circling the wagons and covering up. Which is what they do. They are unified.

As much as they might disagree with each other and as much as... I'll bet you that even within the Obama campaign there are people who think, for example, that Jay Carney is incompetent. I bet you there are people who think Bill Burton is incompetent or that Stephanie Cutter is a fool, but they don't say so. They support them. That's what Byron's York's question was to me. It's because they have an overriding concern, and that's wiping us out.

We don't have that on our side.

We don't have a unity of purpose like that on our side.

The conservatives and Tea Party people, we've got it. But the Republican establishment, we think, doesn't have it. So they're out there telling themselves that we are almost owed this "Romney Killed My Wife" ad because of all the tricks we've told them in the past, when all we've done is tell the truth about them. At least in the case of the Willie Horton ad and the Swift Boat veterans, both ads were true. But they were both from the Republican side.

So the media has enshrined those two ads in history as horrible and maliciously false: Willie Horton and the Swift Boat ads. Now, you go back to 1964 and LBJ's Daisy ad. If you haven't seen that ad, if you weren't alive, that was LBJ v. Goldwater. It was the same kind of campaign. Goldwater was going to destroy the world. Goldwater was a Bond villain. Goldwater was the most irresponsible guy, his finger poised to launch nuclear weapons and everybody was going to die. Goldwater was irresponsible.

Everything they say about conservatives today they were saying about Goldwater then. And they produced an ad. It was this little girl, a black and white ad of a little girl out there picking daisies. She's picking flowers and she's smiling. She was a little blond and she's counting, "That's one. I picked this for my doggy. I picked this for my..." She wasn't saying it. She was just counting, and the next thing you knew there's the mushroom cloud. A nuclear detonation, wiping out the little girl picking flowers, called the Daisy ad.

And all that ad did was say that Goldwater would start a nuclear war if he was elected and that he wanted to! Where do you go from "Romney killed my wife!" What's the next ad? It's still only August. What do they do next? (interruption) No, no, I guarantee you we're going to get an ad: "Where was Mitt Romney on 9/11?" Did anybody see...? (interruption) You think that's outrageous? How can anything be more disgusting than this one? And they're standing by it even though they know it's false.

They're out there lying and saying they don't know the facts. We had Stephanie Cutter saying, "I don't than the facts of this man's story." They know the facts of this guy's story. They've known this guy since March or April, this Soptic guy who worked at GST Steel in Kansas City. But already Romney is a felon. Now he is a murderer. He is a poisoner of children. Yeah, and he abused the family dog. Of course he would start a nuclear war if he got a chance! Did anybody see Mitt Romney on 9/11?

"His wife took a ball-peen hammer to a horse that lost a race!" We could do that, a takeoff on Michael Vick. "Vick did some things with pit bulls, but do you know what Ann Romney does with horses that lose? She goes out, she buys a hammer, and she slams them to death!" What's to stop them? If they're going to run an ad saying Romney killed someone's wife, why wouldn't Ann Romney go out and kill horses that lose races? That's all they've got, folks. It's all they've got.

They don't have a candidate that they can say "four more years" about.

They don't have a candidate they can say is a great guy. They don't have a candidate they can say of, "He knows what he's doing." They don't have a candidate about whom they can say, "This guy's got our answers." They've got a disaster that they have to get reelected. They have an incompetent, contemptuous disaster of a president they've got to get reelected. And they care as much about staying in power themselves as they do about keeping Obama in the White House.

It's only a matter of time before the Obama campaign tries to tie Romney to 9/11 somehow. "I mean, after all, the attack was in the Financial District of New York City. Bain Capital is located in Boston. All of Bain's competitors are in New York. And we all know that Romney was calling the shots in 2001. And if Mitt Romney had no compunction about killing a guy's wife, well, is it too big a stretch to imagine 9/11?" I mean, where can they go from this? But they will go somewhere.

Now we're getting stories... I started a trend. I almost feel bad about this. All week I've been talking about how it works; now everybody with a blog is talking about how it works. And I -- frankly, honestly -- think it doesn't. This stuff. I think they're going way too far. I think the vast majority... Well, "the vast majority" is too much. I think some people in this country are disgusted with this campaign. I think they are fit to be tied, repulsed, disgusted with this. Like we all are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Our microphones are everywhere. We've come across some people that the Obama campaign is thinking of using in future ads against Mitt Romney. It's called "More About Mitt."

ANNOUNCER: Now, more about Mitt Romney...

MAN #1: I don't think Mitt Romney understands what he's doing to hardworking Americans like me. I -- I live in Oklahoma, and when Mitt Romney was governor he did nothing about me being laid off by the fire department last year.

MAN #2: Uh, I lost my job six years back before Bain Capital took over the mill, and Mitt Romney never offered me my job back or offered to pay my health insurance or house note or car note or nothing.

MAN #3: I went to Staples, a company Mitt Romney founded, because they had a coupon in the paper. But they said it wasn't good because it was from last week's paper. I was so disappointed. I don't think Mitt Romney understands what he's done to everyone in America -- and he hates women and doesn't pay any taxes.

ANNOUNCER: Priorities USA Action is responsible for the content of this ad because we believe everything Harry Reid ever said is absolutely true. Besides, it fits our agenda. So we ran with it because we are desperate as hell to win!

RUSH: That's exactly right.

Where do they go from here? Where do you go from "Romney killed my wife!"